Chapter Sixteen #3
“Why is he killing his own demons?” I asked Ysolde.
“That’s the only way to break the banes and prohibitions,” she answered, tossing arcany at the demons.
Yrian handed me his phone as he started forward.
I was touched, knowing just how much he treasured it.
That he trusted me to keep it safe had me weepy-eyed, and I stopped him for a moment, pulling him around to face me.
“Just so you know, I love you more than I can possibly describe. You are the most wonderful man—dragon—and I’m so proud of you I could burst. But if you let your brother kill you, I swear to everything and everyone that I will hunt you down in whatever afterlife you find yourself in, and I will have many things to say to you. Many. Things.”
He didn’t smile, but his lips twitched twice before he gave me a swift, hard kiss. “Stay back, mate. Do not listen to him. Do not go near him. Do not attempt to glamour him.”
“And you stay safe. Yrian.” I stopped him as he turned away, obviously champing at the bit to confront his brother.
He cocked an eyebrow at me.
I let him see the confidence in my eyes. “You can do this. You have your family around you. You have the strength to do this.”
He nodded, then, with Baltic, charged down the hallway, slaughtering demons left and right.
“I think a few spells are in order,” Ysolde said, cracking her knuckles.
She began to intone softly, her hands making wide gestures, while I gathered up the slug glamours I’d woven while upstairs, and began to fling them like Frisbees.
A few landed, instantly turning the demons into slugs, which Yrian and Baltic stomped on before the glamours faded, effectively destroying the demons’ forms.
“Kashi!” Yrian roared, outright roared, when Bael turned to face us. His form was that of a smallish, black-haired man, but I wasn’t fooled. Even as far away as I was, I could feel the dark power rolling off him.
It wasn’t Bael who responded, however.
“What is he doing here? By the gods! He should be trapped in the Duat! Didn’t Asfet say he was trapped? Why is he here?” Tenite stood behind Bael, working on the vault doors with a couple of plastic devices, no doubt attempting to break the code.
Bael snarled something in Latin that stung like a whip, causing Yrian and Baltic to both leap at him, their swords singing in the air.
Bael took one look at the light sword and shoved his hands forward, a black miasma made up of his power slamming into the men, and sending them flying a good twenty feet back behind us.
I threw two identical slug glamours on him, half hoping their combined force would take him out, even if just for a few seconds, but with no luck.
Ysolde started flinging arcane balls at Tenite, who screeched, spread her hands wide, and lowered her head.
“Mate!” Baltic yelled, a panicked note in his voice that had her checking for a second, before spinning on her heel and racing back toward him.
At the sight of Tenite clearly getting ready to blast us with her fire, Yrian snarled, “Get out of here. Get everyone out of the building.”
“Bael—” Baltic started to protest.
Yrian’s fire burst out of him, but he directed most of it forward, into a cone that hit both Bael and Tenite.
“GO!” he bellowed, raising his sword again as Bael and Tenite staggered backward five steps, both of them hit—but not harmed—by Yrian’s fire. I assumed that because Bael was also the son of Tenite, he was immune to its potent nature, whereas the others were not.
Baltic didn’t waste time arguing. He threw Ysolde up the stairs, leaping up after her.
I didn’t particularly like the odds of Yrian taking on Bael and Tenite by himself, but I knew he would protect the dragonkin with his life.
“And I’ll be damned if it ends like that,” I swore, falling in behind Yrian as he passed me.
My hands instinctively reached for the magic inherent in the building, somewhat hindered by all the dark power released by the demons as Bael destroyed them in his attempt to break the magic protecting the vault.
And just at the moment that Tenite released her fire, Bael’s form rippled in the air, a blue crystal held in his hand. For a moment, I thought it was the light sword, but I realized that it had to be the shard of the dragon heart that everyone was so fussed over.
Yrian’s fire burst forth from him a second time as he screamed an oath in an ancient-sounding language.
“Did you think you could best me?” Bael snarled, fire from both Tenite and Yrian erupting around us, filling the hall from floor to ceiling, the pain of it leaving me wrapping my arms around myself, gasping for air. “You are too like your sire.”
The sword swung down in a fiery arc just as Tenite screamed, flinging her hands wide, letting off what I figured was equivalent to a massive firebomb.
At that moment, there was a sensation of the dark power surrounding us being drawn into Bael, and then he slammed the shard forward to the vault door.
Silence reigned for a fraction of a second; then the air around us exploded, and I felt myself flying backward into a wall that suddenly wasn’t there.
“Becket!” Yrian yelled, running to me, pulling me out of the burning rubble.
“I’m fine, just winded. Get your brother,” I said, clambering to my feet.
He whirled around, stalking through the surrounding inferno to the spot where Bael had stood.
He was gone, but the door to the vault was blown off its hinges, fire filling the space inside.
I could see Tenite’s shape there, as well, obviously searching for the blood moon.
Yrian whirled around to me. “Gather the energy!”
“What energy?” I asked, stumbling forward, ignoring the pain of the fire. I didn’t think it could kill me, since I was Yrian’s official mate, but it still hurt like the dickens.
“He broke the shard. Gather the energy into a glamour so it can be re-formed,” he said before diving into the fiery vault.
I tried to focus, but the pain, as well as all the dark power still present, made it difficult, but as I closed my eyes and allowed myself to be open to the possibilities, I automatically began gathering up the magic released by the breaking of the shard, weaving it into a glamour that I prayed would hold it safe until Yrian could do what he needed with it.
I slowed with each passing second, feeling my flesh start to burn. “I guess ... ow ... I’m not as immune ... shit, that tendril is just out of reach ... as I thought. Oh goddess. Not more.”
Another wave of fire poured out of the vault, Yrian being knocked backward past me. Just as I forced my blistering legs to move forward a few more steps to catch up the last bit of shard magic, Tenite appeared, laughing maniacally.
“You never learn, do you?” was all she said before she literally exploded into a massive ball of fire, hate, and vengeance.
The walls cracked and rumbled, and I knew the whole building was about to come down upon us.
Yrian wrapped his body around me, his breath harsh in my ear as he lurched forward, half dragging, half carrying me to the stairs.
I honestly don’t know how he got us out of there in time.
I clutched the precious glamour to myself, my skin peeling, my lips cracked, as I hoarsely cried out when I tried to get my legs to function.
Just as the pain was too much, black blotches starting to fill my vision, air hit us, blessedly cooler air.
Noises were all around us, voices that I recognized, and some I didn’t. Everyone was talking at once, shouting, demanding to know what happened, and why they felt as if pieces of their souls were destroyed.
Yrian staggered to a stop, and hands took me from him, holding me up while the voices continued. I managed to peel my swollen eyelids open, staring in horror at Yrian. He was scorched black, his flesh cracked and peeling, his mother’s fire clearly too much even for him.
“Where’s Bael?” Baltic asked, his arm around Ysolde. “Was that the shard we felt?”
“Yes. Kashi destroyed it to open the vault. Becket ... Becket ...” He toppled over without another word.
I struggled to free myself, tucking the glamour into my shirt as I knelt next to him. Around us sirens pierced my eardrums, but I had no mind for the destroyed, burning building in front of us.
It was the man who lay before me blackened and burned that held my full attention.
“You are the most amazing man,” I told him, taking his face in my hands just as Charity had done his father. I kissed one spot on the side of his mouth that was less burned than the rest, tears splashing onto both my hands and his face.
He moaned softly, his arms moving.
“He’s alive,” Gabriel said as he knelt next to me, reaching out when May handed him a couple of tubes of what appeared to be ointment. “But you are badly burned.”
“I’m fine,” I said, flinching back when he reached for me. “Take care of Yrian. He took the full brunt of his mom’s anger, not to mention a face full of magic dragon shard exploding.”
Gabriel quickly examined Yrian, then gave me a little nod. “He’ll survive this, although he may have some scars.”
“As if I cared about that. Just make him better. I am not going to fall in love with the big galoot only to live without him.” My voice broke on the last few words, and I gave in to the misery of the moment, curling up next to Yrian while sobbing with relief, anger, fear, and so many other emotions I couldn’t begin to pick them apart.
It took almost an hour before the dragons got Yrian to Drake’s house.
Gabriel didn’t feel he should be moved until Yrian’s natural healing abilities started to function, but after much weeping on my part, hand-wringing by Aisling, Ysolde, and May, and some soft, wet snuffles by Jim that I interpreted as being an attempt to offer comfort, Yrian came around.
“Don’t try to talk, not yet,” Gabriel warned him.
Yrian made a horrible noise in his chest, one hand moving.